


Roxy: Hide in Plain Sight

by BlameMyMuses



Series: Apotheosis [9]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Homestuck
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:53:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23338708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlameMyMuses/pseuds/BlameMyMuses
Summary: Since we're all...stuck at home...have a quick series update! I hope you're all staying healthy, and not stressing out too much! Enjoy the fic. :}
Series: Apotheosis [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/478522
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	Roxy: Hide in Plain Sight

**Author's Note:**

> Since we're all...stuck at home...have a quick series update! I hope you're all staying healthy, and not stressing out too much! Enjoy the fic. :}

One time, when you were very small, you played hide-and-seek with some friends.

They couldn’t find you for three days. You couldn’t find your way back to them, either, and had no idea how it happened, or how to make it un-happen.

Someone found you wandering, alone and dehydrated, three towns away. She had taken you home, fed you, cleaned you up, and then started looking for a way to find your family. It took a week to reunite you with your parents and siblings, and during that week your rescuer showed you just a little bit about alchemy, to keep you entertained.

It felt like magic, like making something from nothing, and at six that was pretty much the most exciting thing you could imagine. The alchemist had laughed and said it was a lot more like making something from something else, that something from nothing needed a very special magical stone.

But you were pretty sure you _could_ make something from nothing, that you’d done it before, and so you kept practicing.

When you tried to show your family the little starting array you had learned—a simple square and a circle—you were punished.

Severely.

After that, you learned to hide things. Everything. You hid _everything_. It took a long time for you to learn to trust people again.

***

At fourteen, you are a year into your training to become a warrior monk for Ishvala. It’s not really something you want to do with your life, but it serves as an effective mask for your true interests.

Alchemy. The science of creation. It makes you feel like a wizard, and the thrill of it keeps drawing you back.

As you go through the basic exercise patterns with your staff, in your head you’re going over the basic sweeps and arcs of the standard array formulation. As you move into more complex pattern dances with the staff, adding in kicks and ducks and jabs, you connect each move to a different element, and build an array into each new drill you run through. Every form takes on a new form in your mind, and you can practically imagine the crackle of the alchemical charge…

You stop, mid-downward sweep, and can feel your hair rising at the base of your neck. There is a pressure, like a storm, of nearly discharged energy.

You drop the staff, abort the practice set in the middle, and go to sit down in a corner, someplace quiet and out of the way, anywhere so long as no one can find you to make sure you’re okay.

The other trainees don’t even notice you leaving, because you don’t want them to.

It’s that simple for you. Has been for a while.

***

You’re used to hiding things from other people—secrets, objects, whatever—but you are not used to things being hidden _from_ you.

And yet there is a…a twitchiness. At the back of your mind, like a word at the tip of your tongue, or when you walk through a doorway, and forget what you went into the room to do.

The worst part is, you’re fairly certain the secret being kept from you is your own secret. And that’s just…lousy. You dive deeper into the alchemy, trying to uncover whatever the dark pit of your mind has at its bottom. You try harder and more complex arrays, always at night, always in secret, and never reach a point where you need to stop. The pit has no bottom.

You are grasping uselessly in the dark for something that doesn’t exist.

***

One day, you reach too far.

***

There is a door at the bottom of the abyss, and it stares back at you, hungry and salivating like a hound, maw fanged and snapping.

You stand at the edge of your array, your masterpiece, an array so simple it should never have worked, and never for something so grand as a way to open such a door as the one before you.

You’re sixteen, going on thirty-six, going on three, going on three hundred, three thousand…

It is far too much to bear, for one who embodies nothingness.

The door creaks open, and something reaches for you, but you’re safe though you don’t know how. It was part of a bargain made before the universe was born…

You fall anyway.

***

You wake up, and feel the grit of the chalk beneath your chin. When you groan and force yourself up to your knees, you realize you aren’t alone. You freeze, and look slowly up at the horrified expression on your mother’s face.

“Your father has gone for the priests,” she says. Her voice is hoarse and barely louder than a whisper. “Oh, my Roshni. What have you done…?”

There isn’t any point denying it at this point. You sit back down, your hands shaking as you clench them, and you wait.

You don’t have to wait for long.

They take you by the arms, they hold you for a night. In the morning they take you out before the whole of your community, and explain that you are guilty of the arrogance of alchemy, denying the natural state of Ishvala’s creations.

Your head, hung low, jerks up suddenly at that, and you stare at the elder with a sudden and astonishing clarity. The thing in the doorway becomes clear to you, and you know why it couldn’t hurt you. Why it _wouldn’t_.

“They aren’t,” you say, and your voice is sharp even in your own ears. Your people turn and look at your, even though you are guilty of the worst sin in their eyes. “They aren’t Ishvala’s creations,” you say, even louder. Your mother chokes back a sob. You don’t look at her. She isn’t really your mother anyway.

One of the warrior monks, a boy you’ve trained with for years, strikes you across the face. You taste the blood on your lips and you smile at him anyway, because the revelation is too great, too joyous.

“They aren’t Ishvala’s, they’re _mine_.” Your voice is a creeping shadow, a whisper in the ear of everyone present, and the collective horror as they draw back from your blasphemy is as beautiful as it is painful.

You are crying and laughing, because the secret—that _damn secret_ —was there all along, in your own skin, standing just behind you as near as your own shadow.

You only stop laughing when they declare you exile, when they brand your face with the mark of your shame, the mark of your pride.

Thick black lines arc across both your cheeks and up over your forehead when they are done, and you are numb and bleeding from the fresh tattoo. They turn their backs on you.

That’s okay. It’s okay because now you know the secret, you can start looking for the others.

You gather your staff and head to your buried cache of alchemy books and equipment, and turn and leave the place you’ve always called home, the place you’ve never felt welcome. You aren’t stuck there anymore, bound by expectations and culture.

***

You pause at the outskirts of the encampment, and resist the urge to look back. It’s not that you’re afraid to leave. It’s that you’re afraid the others won’t know the secret you’ve fought for years to learn.

And then you decide you’re being ridiculous. They’re gods as much as you are, and you know at least Rose will be aware that something isn’t as it should be.

Deliberately and for the first time ever, you step into the darkness, step into the void.

You don’t know how to control it, not really, but that’s okay. You can feel the others somewhere in the shadows, and one of those others is your real mother, your daughter, your sister-in-arms. All you have to do is open the right door.


End file.
